Olympic Gymnast Laurie Hernandez Launches a Body-Positive Clothing Line: See the First Look!

Olympic gold medal gymnast Laurie Hernandez is taking on a new project beyond perfecting her flips and tumbles — she’s become a designer, and she’s given People.com the exclusive first look at her debut line.

“Gymnastics is all about perfection, but as I grew, I saw my body change in different ways,” she says. “I wanted to make this line about self-love, and full of pieces that make you feel comfortable and confident in who you are.”

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Her first collection, which lands online at jcpenney.com on February 26, features dresses and tops in bold prints, a varsity-style bomber jacket in a poppy aqua hue, dressed-up sweats with cutouts and stripes and more, all for $37 to $59.

Hernandez admits she hasn’t always felt comfortable and confident herself, which is why she’s motivated to help others to feel fabulous through their style. “I think it happens with a lot of girls my age and lot of girls who might be younger than me, where they think, ‘Aw, I don’t feel extremely confident in how I look today,’” she says. “I want to make sure that we can look in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, I might not be feeling right today but how can I myself just feel better and how can I make sure to promote self-love?’”

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Promoting positivity through style is what drew her design in the first place, she says. “The fact that I can have my own clothing line and I can have an input on how I want things to look, how I want things to feel is so exciting,” she says. “Making sure I can have a line where everybody can feel confident in what they’re wearing because they feel good about themselves is all that really matters.”

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For the gymnast, feeling confident goes beyond just putting on a comfortable outfit, too. She also loves face masks from Sephora and listening to music like Tori Kelly and Dua Lipa. “Doing things like that makes me really excited and feel a little bit better,” she says.

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So when all of her tumbling is over, does she see a future in fashion? “Maybe! That would be pretty cool.”

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